ROLL ‘EM BACK: UNC canceling DEI requirements for hiring. “In a growing backlash against woke culture, the board of the University of North Carolina moved to ban diversity, equity and inclusion requirements from its hiring and promotion process this week.”

ELIZABETH WARREN COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Rights to ‘Crying Indian’ ad to go to Native American group.

Since its debut in 1971, an anti-pollution ad showing a man in Native American attire shed a single tear at the sight of smokestacks and litter taking over a once unblemished landscape has become an indelible piece of TV pop culture.

It’s been referenced over the decades since on shows like “The Simpsons” and “South Park” and in internet memes. But now a Native American advocacy group that was given the rights to the long-parodied public service announcement is retiring it, saying it has always been inappropriate.

The so-called “Crying Indian” with his buckskins and long braids made the late actor Iron Eyes Cody a recognizable face in households nationwide. But to many Native Americans, the public service announcement has been a painful reminder of the enduring stereotypes they face.

The nonprofit that originally commissioned the advertisement, Keep America Beautiful, had long been considering how to retire the ad and announced this week that it’s doing so by transferring ownership of the rights to the National Congress of American Indians.

Note that it’s not until the ninth paragraph that AP points out that Cody was an early trans-Indian:

Cody, who was Italian American but claimed to have Cherokee heritage through his father, was typecast as a stock Native American character, appearing in over 80 films.

Flashback: The True Story of ‘The Crying Indian.’ “In 1996, a journalist with The New Orleans Times-Picayune ventured to Gueydan, Louisiana, the small town Iron Eyes had allegedly grown up in, and sought out his heritage. Here, it was revealed that ‘America’s favorite Indian’ was actually a second-generation Italian. ‘He just left,’ recalled his sister, Mae Abshire Duhon, ‘and the next thing we heard was that he had turned Indian.’”

ROGER KIMBALL: This Presidents’ Day, our president was overseas promising money to the Ukrainian president, while Donald Trump offered aid and comfort to American victims in East Palestine.

DAVID LAT: The U.S. News Rankings Drama And The Future Of Legal Education.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Night Vision Binoculars – Night Vision Goggles for Adults. #CommissionEarned

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: Republicans Justify ‘Distrust of Government, Because They Do Such a Bad Job Protecting the Public.’

—CNS News, Thursday.

Chaser:

But as we’ve witnessed over the last weeks of protests and demonstrations, social controls are not sustainable. They require more and more oppressive means of containing people who stand up against the oppression.

In any event, the core of America’s identity is not the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity. It is the ideals we share, however imperfectly achieved.

Moving toward those ideals requires that we relinquish social control and renew our commitment to social investment.

For starters, defund the police and invest in our communities.

—“Robert Reich: ‘Defund the Police’ Means Moving From Social Control to Social Investment,” Newsweek, June 23rd, 2020.

In case, Reich would likely split the difference by declaring, “I claim no higher truth than my own perceptions. This is how I lived it.”

AT SOME LEVEL, YES: It’s Not Just Our Students: ChatGPT Is Coming For Faculty Scholarship.

DNC-MSM DUMPS DILBERT: Hundreds of newspapers drop ‘Dilbert’ comic strip after racist tirade from creator Scott Adams.

The move came after Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind “Dilbert,” effectively encouraged segregation in a shocking rant on YouTube. His comments came in response to a poll from the conservative firm Rasmussen Reports that said 53% of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be White.”

The Anti-Defamation League has noted that the phrase emerged on the infamous message board 4chan in 2017 as a trolling campaign and has a “long history” in the white supremacist movement.

“If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to th is poll — that’s a hate group,” Adams said Wednesday on his YouTube show “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” Adams added. “And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the f**k away … because there is no fixing this.”

Adams has since said on Twitter that he was only “advising people to avoid hate” and suggested that the cancellation of his cartoon signals that free speech in America is under assault.

Having been pro-Trump since 2015, no doubt many publications were looking for an excuse to drop Adams. Why did he make it so easy for them?

(See also: Derbyshire, John in 2012.)

JEFF GOLDSTEIN ON THE CULTURE WARS: “I’m sensing some change.”

FROM CAITLIN WALSH:  Mama Bunny #1: Comics and Stories.

#CommissionEarned

Parenting is tough, but it’s also rewarding. And occasionally even hilarious. Now collected for the first time, follow Mama Bunny and her family through this series of mostly-autobiographical strips and written stories as they navigate the ups and downs of dinnertime, chores, and all the other day-to-day adventures of a stay-at-home mom trying to raise and teach two children.

RICHARD CORY:  I thought of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem (and Simon and Garfunkel’s song based on the poem) when I heard of billionaire Thomas Lee’s suicide:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Rest in peace, Mr. Lee.

NO, BUT IT’S GREAT PROPAGANDA:  No, @CNN, an Opinion Piece about ‘Dangerous Climate Feedback Loops’ Doesn’t Qualify as Science.

JUST WORK IT OUT?  Exercise is more effective than medication for mental health: study.

HE SAID THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD:  Dem official denounced for complaining of school budget costs for disabled children who weren’t aborted.

Always with their eugenics obsession.

YOU KNOW SOME OF US, ASTHMATICS IN CRAZY STATES NOT ONLY HAD NOWHERE TO GO TO, BUT GOT PRETTY DEPRESSED:  The Real Pandemic in America Today: Obesity.

DEFINITELY WOULD MAKE SENSE:  Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh’s Pipe Dream.

NONE OF US WANTS THE DEMOCRATS. WHY DO YOU THINK THEY FRAUD SO HARD:  The Democrats’ dilemma: even Californians don’t want Kamala Harris.

SURE, THIS IS THE WORK OF PEOPLE WHO WON LEGITIMATE ELECTIONS:  Democrats introduce resolution to ban Trump from US Capitol.

WELL, IT WOULD MAKE SENSE:  UPDATE: Was the Nord Stream 2 Rupture an Accidental Catalyst?

WELL, TURNED OUT HE WASN’T STRONK AND THAT WON’T BE PERMITTED:  On anniversary of Ukraine invasion, Putin trying to change the subject?

TO BE HONEST, I’M SURPRISED, THE RANDY PENGUIN (PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE HATES TO BE CALLED THAT) FOUND A CLUE:  Penguin Realizes Vandalizing Roald Dahl Books Is A Bad Idea.

Based on working for them and watching them, I’d think this was impossible, even with two hands, a seeing eye dog and a clue locating radar.

NAH. THIS CAUSE JUST ATTRACTS CRAZY, BARELY FUNCTIONAL IDIOTS:  Forewoman in Trump Grand Jury is so Strange Some Liberals Think She is a Plant.

It’s like they don’t know their own side.

IF YOU CAN AT ALL, TAKE THE KIDS OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL:  “Christo-Fascist” Parents Deserve To Be In The Dark.

If you can’t, watch them relentlessly and make sure you know what they’re teaching your kids. These people are dangerous.

BUT MAH INTERSECTION, MUCH DIVERSE:  Sam Brinton-Dark Meaning To “Who Are You Wearing?”

BECAUSE IT’S PLAIN AS THE NOSE ON OUR FACES IT’S CRAZY:  Former Reuters Science Writer Slams Climate Hysteria Promoted by Today’s Media.